Not Applicable
Not Applicable
To remove the gray star (muddy natural eye lenses) one replaces the natural eye lens by an artificial one. Such intraocular lenses show normally the shape of a paragraph sign, where the haptics stand-off s-shaped and centralize the lens within the capsular bag. These artificial lenses are very flexible in their wet stage and are therefore foldable to be better implanted through an advantageous small lateral slit of the eye, but they are not deformable any more to change their focus. Since such artificial lenses show an unchangeable focus, the sharpness of before or behind it lying picture points have therefore to be approximate by adjusting glasses. The resulting blurred sight in between causes a remarkable loss of vision comfort, which should be reduced by an optimally accommodating artificial lens, which offer the chance to renounce of any correcting glasses.
Even without diagnosed muddy natural lenses, such a well accommodating artificial lens is ready to be replaced in healthy eyes in the future, to avoid expensive laser corrections of the cornea in case of great short-sightedness and can prevent long-sightedness in old age.
Instead of changing the convexity of an artificial lens one can accommodate only by changing the lens distance from the retina caused by a contracting ciliary muscle, provided it remained undamaged after the removal of the natural lens and is still active.
Concepts of accommodating artificial IO-lenses are already known from the patent applications: Cumming (WO 99/29266 according to his application PCT US98/26171, A61F 2/16, priority Sep. 12, 1997) and of another application of Dr. Helmut Payer, Plantaweg 12 a, CH-7000 Chur/Schweiz (Datasheet: 4351 980414) and WO 9903427. It has to be doubt, if the claim of linkage arms in this last application of which all the following claims depend on is qualified enough for a patent, because such linkage arms are already known from earlier concepts.